[CF-metadata] packed flags

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:42:56 +0000

Dear Richard

I am not sure I quite understand what you are saying. Is the problem that
you want to use less than a byte for your flags and pack them into words,
but that CF does not provide a convention for packing that handles less
than a byte? Does HDF allow you to define datatypes of n bits? If so, perhaps
netCDF is going to support this at some point.

This strikes me as a problem it would be awkward to deal with in CF. It's not
a metadata limitation, but one which refers to file format. CF is based on
netCDF variables, and in this case you want to pack several variables into one,
which "breaks" the logical model.

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Tue Nov 14 2006 - 06:42:56 GMT